avoiding oracle cost traps when migrating to aws

Avoiding Oracle Cost Traps When Migrating to AWS

Nick Walter

Principal Architect & Cloud Practice Lead

House of Brick Technologies

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021

House of Brick

House of Brick Technologies, an OpsCompass company, helps customers with challenges deploying databases on- or off-

premise, whether on bare metal hardware, virtualized infrastructure or cloud-based models:

Compliance & Governance

• Database licensing

• Audit prep & defense

• Cloud operation tools

Architecture & Migration

• Database plan & design

• DB POCs & migrations

• Related HA, DR & BU

Database Modernization

• Database virt & cloud• Database replatforming

(Postgres/MySQL)• Database DevOps

Compliance & Governance

• Database licensing

• Audit prep & defense

• Cloud operation tools


Oracle Would Really Prefer Customers Went to Oracle Cloud

Oracle Wants AWS to Seem Scary/Confusing/Expensive

• Licensing Cost Claims

• License Compliance Claims

• Supportability Claims

AWS is a great option for running Oracle workloads – If the Traps are Avoided

The Challenge


The Licensing And Support Traps


House of Brick consultants are not attorneys. Any advice given herein should be validated with appropriate legal representation.

Disclaimer


• Licensing is Contractual

• Oracle Cannot Dictate Terms

• Contract is Surprisingly Ambiguous on Certain Areas

• Virtualization/Cloud

• CPU Disablement

• Contract Only Includes Certain Artifacts• Entire Agreement Clause Excludes Everything

Else

• Oracle Representatives Often Make Incorrect or Misleading Claims

Oracle Licensing101


Oracle Licensing Metrics

Processor

• Tied to Number of

Hardware Processors in

Server Hosting the

Installation

• Common in Production

Environments

• Most Flexible

Named User Plus

(NUP)

• Tied to Number of

Users AND Hardware

Processors in Server

Hosting the Installation

• Common in Non-

Production

Environments

Unlimited License

Amendment (ULA)

• Unlimited Use of

Named Products

• Very Expensive

• Time Limited

• Converts to Processor

Licenses at End of Term


Standard Processor-Based Licensing

Q. License Definitions and Rules

Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are

installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a processor basis may be

accessed by your internal users (including agents and contractors) and by your third

party users. The number of required licenses shall be determined by multiplying the

total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor specified

on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table which can be accessed at

http://oracle.com/contracts.

http://oracle.com/contracts


Oracle Contract Artifacts

Oracle Document Contractual?

Technical Support Policies Yes

Processor Core Factor Table Yes

Ordering Documents Yes

Software Investment Guide No

Licensing Data Recovery Guide No

Technology Hosting No

Partitioning Policy No

Cloud Computing Environment Policy No


Counting Processors for Oracle Licensing

• Count all physical cores where Oracle is “installed and/or running”

• Apply Core Factor

• No Contractual Ability to License by vCPUHYPERVISOR

Data Data Data Data


Extra-Contractual Grant by Oracle to their Customers

• Policy Grants Rights to use VCPU Metric for Licensing

• Oracle Can (and Does) Change the Policy

“This policy applies to cloud computing environments from the following vendors: Amazon Web Services –Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and Microsoft Azure Platform (collectively, the ‘Authorized Cloud Environments’).”

The “Oracle Cloud Policy”

www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/cloud-licensing-070579.pdf


• AWS Provides Oracle License

• On-Demand Billing Model

• Standard Edition 2 Only

• AWS Provides Oracle License

• On-Demand Billing Model

• Standard Edition 2 Only

Amazon RDS License-Included


Licensing by vCPU for Oracle Software

• Count vCPUs, not Physical Cores

• No Core Factor

• Certain Products are Omitted

• With AWS Hyper-Threading

• 2 vCPU = 1 Processor License

• With NO AWS Hyper-Threading

• 1 vCPU = 1 Processor License


Oracle Contract Artifacts

AWS deployment option SE license includedOracle cloud

policyCore-based

licenseUnlimited license

agreement

Amazon RDS ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔

Amazon EC2 compute ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔

VMware Cloud on AWS ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔

Dedicated hosts on Amazon EC2

✖ ✔ ✔ ✔

Amazon EC2 bare metal instances

✖ ✔ ✔ ✔


Avoiding the Traps


“Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle has several limitations: it supports only SE1 and SE2 Oracle Database licenses, and does not support Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Data Guard, and many other Oracle Database features.”

Separate Fact From Fiction

www.oracle.com/cloud/oci-vs-aws/


• Oracle Licensing is Tightly Tied to CPUs –Database Performance Is Not

• Relational Database Performance Driven by IO and RAM

• Database Licensing Makes No Differentiation Between Fast and Slow CPUs

• Optimum Architecture for Oracle Workloads Couples Maximum RAM and IO With Minimal CPU Allocations

Architect for Oracle Licensing Efficiency


Make Extensive Use of AWS Optimize CPU Feature

• Reduce vCPUs Allocated to Instances at Creation

• Works on RDS/EC2

• The Majority of On-Premises Databases are Over-Allocated on CPU!

Pick Instances Based on RAM/IO Characteristics

• r5b Instances are Fantastic for Relational Databases

• c5/z1d Instances Also Useful

• Pay Attention to EBS Bandwidth

Architecture Tactics


Right Sizing Reduces Oracle License Usage Dramatically

• Do Not Do Naïve Like-For-Like Sizing

• Embrace AWS Elasticity – Size for Right Now

• Use Hard Numbers for Sizing – AWR and SPECInt Rate

• Use Optimize CPU

Right Sizing in EC2 or RDS


• vCPU Based Licensing NOTRequired When Server Processors are Known

• Dedicated/Bare-Metal EC2 Hosts

• VMWare Cloud on AWS

• Not Applicable to RDS

• Effective at Scale

Leverage Traditional Processor Licensing


• RDS Oracle SE2 – License Included

• Great for Dev/Test

• Very Tempting for Production Workloads

• Not Usable for SaaS Workloads

“You may not:

…

use the Oracle Software for rental, timesharing, subscription services, hosting, or outsourcing;

…

make the Oracle Software available in any manner to any third party for use in the third party’s business operations;”

Utilize RDS Standard Edition License Included

www.amazon.com/service-terms/


• Establish Record Keeping• CloudTrail

• AWS Config

• Change Management Records

• Consider AWS License Manager

• Be Prepared to Seek Expert Help

Be Prepared For Oracle License Audit


In Closing


• Study Options and Plan Ahead

• Validate Readiness Prior to Cloud Migration

• Consider Third Party Assistance to Validate Defensible Oracle Deployments in AWS

Summary


FAQ: Oracle on AWS

BLOG: Understanding Options For Oracle on AWS

WHITE PAPER: Avoiding Oracle Traps with AWS Solutions

Resources

www.houseofbrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-05_AWS_FAQs.pdf

www.amazon.com/blogs/apn/understanding-your-options-for-

deploying-and-licensing-oracle-on-aws/

www.houseofbrick.com/avoiding-oracle-traps-in-aws-whitepaper